Page 109 of Tasting Fire
“Dammit, I just fell asleep.”
Cash waved him out of the room, then stepped in front of the door to make certain no one else got in. Or out.
Emmy did make him smile when she braced a foot against Amory’s chair and shoved it several feet across the room, careening into a wall. “Oliver, wake up.”
Admirably, the douche face went from heavy breathing to alert instantly. “Yes?” When he focused and realized it was Emmy standing over him, he put on what Cash thought of as his Sitting Shithead pose. Chin up, eyebrows arched, chest out. “Emerson, this is a—”
“Save it,” she told him. “And don’t bother to get up. I want to know why you took this exchange position. That’s a very odd thing for a hospital chief of staff to do.”
“BaltGen was becoming a little stale. I thought if I—”
“You know,” she said, “I should probably kick myself for not realizing what a fucking liar you are.”
His mouth pulled into an I-smell-working-class-shit sneer. “I see your language has devolved to Southern classlessness.”
Cash wanted to pop the fucker for that alone. Why did people think just because Southerners talked slow that they were dumb?
“You came to North Carolina not long after I did. I told you it was over, but that’s not the way things work in your world, is it? If you can’t command the situation, have the last snobby word, then you’ll work out a way to take back control. Tell me the truth about the lawsuit and who encouraged the Hernandez family to file that, Oliver.”
“I have no idea what—”
She got in his face, just pushed right in and growled like a feral animal. Cash was depraved enough to admit, it turned him on. More than a little.
Amory tried to scrabble back, pushing his chair with his feet like Fred Flintstone, but Emmy kept coming, stalking him as he wheeled himself around the room. “Then you might touch on the brick thrown through my apartment building’s window and the fire that gutted a historic building in Steele Ridge.”
“Fire? Why would I—”
Cash interrupted the asshole. “Maybe so you could scare Emmy into running back to BaltGen.”
“Why are you still in North Carolina, Oliver?” Emmy demanded, “and what were you really doing at the hospital in Steele Ridge?”
“That podunk hospital. I was there trying to talk the ER director into firing you.”
“My God, Oliver, what else could you have done to ruin me? Apparently, you’ve tried a little of everything. Starting rumors that I killed a child, the op-ed piece—”
“Fine,” he snapped. “I admit the lawsuit was my idea. I thought if you had to pay—”
“For my own malpractice attorney, that I would come running back to you and your shit-piles of cash?”
“You’ve turned low-class.”
“No,” she retorted. “I’ve relearned how to be myself. The real Emerson McKay.”
Something flickered out in the arrogant prick’s eyes. Some realization that no matter what he did—how many strings he pulled or situations he manipulated—that Emmy was done with him. “And as far as a brick through a window, surely you know I wouldn’t be as crass as that.”
“No sense of style or class in throwing a brick.”
“You haven’t denied setting the fire,” Cash said quietly. “Emmy could’ve been killed.”
Amory sat up straight and reached toward Emmy. Cash lunged forward and put a quick stop to that by bending back the guy’s hand until he dropped his arm. “Are you saying you’ve been put in danger in these other situations?” he asked Emmy. “I would never actually—”
“Hurt me?” Emmy snorted. “What about paying that boy to swat another kid?”
“What?” Amory’s face screwed up. “How does little kids slapping one another have anything to do with whatever is happening here?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped. “It’s when someone manipulates the system to send law enforcement to a specific address. In this case, through online video game play.”
“I wouldn’t waste my time on that kind of nonsense.”
